by J. A. Hailey
“We’ll learn. In fact, we plan to develop a very high speed collection system, and may insert this into new matrixes. Perhaps then, with Quanta opened, rather than obstructed, we may find human consciousness entering and becoming independently capable, much faster than it has been for you guys, maybe ten times faster.”
“Not that we are creating any queue of humans to induct into screenside,” chuckled Priya. “But don’t sweat about the technicalities,” she added, reassuringly. “The current connection stays until you appear fully in screenside.”
“And our plan is for the high-speed system to replace the current one as soon as basic creation is understood,” added Singh. “Even for you two, we might switch to high speed, and Quanta unobstructed, in a while. You’ll notice nothing, if we do, so don’t go inspecting yourselves for changes, beyond your capabilities to see and sense things.” Singh and Priya departed thereafter, and the two humans lay back, with Sagan casting occasional envious glances at Gales.
11
The strangest thing of all was that Michael Gales became afraid.
After dinner, he followed Sagan up to his hotel room and organized himself, with a few sheets and bedcovers, on the very large sofa. “I know, Patrick that it is another birth, and that it is a guarantee of escaping the finality of death here, but I have to also admit that I am absolutely terrified. Irrational, maybe, but it’s never before happened to anyone. Can’t you feel anything?”
“Not yet, Mike, but your range of sensations and awareness must be increasing on a certain continuous scale, and it must be a little bit better for you now. Can you not at least see the room around you?”
“Absolutely nothing more, except that I am surely undeniably aware that I am somehow, to some degree, somewhere else besides here,” said Gales, definitely. “I’m now absolutely sure that I am not imagining things.
“Anyway, I’m going for a shower and piss and whatever, and then I’m getting into my underwear. Thank God I stopped at my room on the way up. I’ll join you after that for a large cognac, and then we can both switch off, while I concentrate on what’s happening with my other self, and freak out the rest of the night.”
It turned out that neither of the two men slept, as Sagan, too, began experiencing and reporting signs of consciousness.
This time, Chang appeared on their screens, to tell them that screenside had been alerted to a second nonborn’s impending arrival.
“Your aura is becoming stronger, Mike,” he said. “We haven’t yet gone for high speed collection, as we think your awareness proves that low speed is doing its work. It may have been unnecessary to do low, and high might be the future system, but we’ll figure it out by trial and error in new cases, if any. Have to be sure we’re not creating defective or actually insane. Feel any advancement over what it was when Singh was with you?”
“No advance, Chang,” replied Gales. “It’s just more of the same, but maybe becoming a bit intrusive, this feeling of being also in a separate place.”
“It’ll be very confusing, won’t it, Chang?” asked Sagan. “Alive in two places at the same time?”
“No, guys. It’s highly unlikely that you will manage such a circus trick. You will certainly be alive in both places at the same time, but you are just as surely going to have to select one of the two places to be operational in. We do not think you will be able to be simultaneously functional in both places”
“You mean, we can be thinking, functioning persons in only one place at one time?”
“That’s what I mean, Patrick.”
“What could the problem be, in running both consciousnesses together?” queried Gales.
“You can try it. There is no restriction. But I think you might drive off the road in humanside.” Chang chuckled, as Singh joined their group.
“But I could keep a light consciousness going in screenside, while focusing on what I’m doing out here, couldn’t I?” argued Gales.
“Absolutely,” said Sagan supporting him. “Nothing can happen on the life and death front in screenside.”
“The policeman will get you here,” laughed Singh. “If you go walking into walls, banging into other people, and falling off bridges, the guardian program will make death in humanside look like heaven.”
“Not allowed?”
“Allowed, like everything is allowed for lawbreakers, but also prohibited and punishable. I could look it up for you.”
“I know,” said Chang. “It is 500 hours for the first offence, and 1,000 hours for each subsequent one,”
“Hours of what?” asked Gales.
“Guardian-supervised non-stop viewing of correctional television programs, like U.S. Congressional debates, church sermons, and similar. In case you are ignoring the mathematics, that works out to over one and a half months. You’ll choose death in humanside; that’s for sure. This punishment is considered so severe that, until today, not one screenside person has fallen foul of the law, any law.”
“So we’ll be just plain humans when in screenside?”
“What else do you want to be?”
12
“You haven’t actually physically walked in their world as yet, and haven’t made physical contact with them, touched them, have you?” asked Grietzmann, the next morning, when meeting Sagan and Gales, out in the garden area of his usual hotel in Paris, the one near their regular hotel. “Look, guys, don’t mind me being skeptical. I’m coming from here, as I’ll explain.
“We three are planning to be operating a con game on the King and the Sheikh, making them imagine that something’s going on in another dimension, something which will lead to them acquiring eternal life.
“They believe us to be serious players in this rather unbelievable game, because of the astonishing work we are doing in converting humans into robots. Our stature is also backed up by the astounding ongoing mental and motor cure intervention program that they know is a gift of the computer world we are talking of taking them into.
“That program is globally famous, and it is known that, for unspecified reasons, you have both declined Nobel Prizes. And so we also have very good social standing, and impeccable references. Otherwise who believes such crap, as entering into a computer by way of consciousness, and thereafter living forever?
“Yes, I know that this computer world has rejected these two rulers, and in fact, has even rejected my application for entry. Now, without a doubt, some form of world exists in the computer network, a very capable world that is giving us proof, every single day, that it can cure mentally ill humans.
“I will always be the first to admit that I am neither a neurosurgeon genius nor a computer genius, but at the same time I have to insist that I be recognized as a very capable rational thinker.
“It started with the Mexican robot program, and continued into the intervention program in mentally ill humans. This world of screenside was not then known to us, and we were working with the tools that we did have. What were they?
“One; microchips implanted into heads, and two; controlling programs based in computers and delivered through Wi-Fi. With these two tools, we were taking over the minds of Mexicans and others, and making them do what we wanted them to do.
“I suppose, if we were so inclined, which we weren’t, because of no practical use to us, we could have made our subjects, or patients, dream as we wanted them to dream.
“Screenside can do things to heads. Of that I have no doubt at all. And so, I am going to try my best to figure out, and perhaps to help you both figure out, how much of what you have going on is actually going on in another world belonging to another dimension, and how much is going on in a lucid dream state, or as a con game played by otherworld beings who are able to take control of minds, through the very tools we ourselves have provided to them.”
“Abe, we are certainly on the route to be coming alive in another dimension,” argued Sagan. “There is absolutely no doubt about that. And we are not going
to be alive in a dream state. We shall become alive, as they’ve told us we are to become, which is to be in the same state that they are - conscious, independent, and fully ourselves. We believe them completely.”
“We have not yet been fitted in,” said Gales. “And that is primarily because we have not yet got to the stage where our consciousnesses have been completely created. When we get to that stage, we know how it will be, based on discussions with the senior beings of screenside, and also based on some visual inputs that they provided us, at the time we figured out that something extremely unusual was going on with the French lady who had had an accident.
“Screenside is a world that is an exact replica of the world we are in right now, here, you and I. You might wonder what that means. I’ll tell you.
“You’ve heard of the Simulation Theory, haven’t you? It says that there is no physical world, as we see it to be, and that we are not physical people, as we believe ourselves to be. Apparently, life is a colossal hoax, and we are all within a computer program.
“Air, water, our bodies, sex, and everything else are merely those things because they have been defined to be those things, within the colossal hoax program in which we are imagining ourselves.
“The beauty of it all is that if we are actually within such a computer program, it would in truth be no hoax at all. Why? The simple answer is that it would be the only reality we could ever know.
“Our hoax, or the hoax they say is being played on us, will be best understood by what the screenside people have created and told us in advance they shall be taking us into, which they define as a world of non-Einstein relativity.
“Everything in screenside has been created and constructed by the people of screenside, and they have done this to live, as exactly as possible, in a replica of the human world that they see and know.
“The best part of it all is that they are fully conversant with the Simulation Theory, and have no problem at all with the possibility of the master world, our world, being a hoax upon humans. Why?”
Sagan laughed and entered the explanation. “It is so simple. It is such clean thinking. They don’t give a damn, because they accept that the only template they will have, ever, is going to be the physical world that created their world, the humanside world they know outside their virtual world, and if it is a hoax world, it matters not to them, because it is still the only real world that both sides of the computer screen can ever have.”
“All that’s left, is for us to become functional in there, and to then discover how good it is to be out in this world again, in bodies other than ours,” he added. “They think it is damn good fun.”
“And why should it be any different, any less fun, when it’s you?” asked Grietzmann.
“For starters, they don’t know the real thing, and we do. Their expectations and benchmarks could, very likely, be lower than ours, I assume.”
“We’re only talking about what it might be like just now, today itself, if we are able to get into human heads, and exit screenside in human bodies,” explained Gales. “The background to it all is this. Screenside virtuals are managing human bodies in the physical world, but their experience of what’s going on may not be sufficiently accurate. We’ll know the difference, and the shortcomings.”
“We’ll know as soon as we reenter the world in human bodies,” said Sagan. “Because we’ve lived as humans, we’ll know immediately. It could probably mean that we might need better connections into the central nervous system. It could require improved microchips, and that will happen naturally, as the years go by; most likely it’ll be the first scenario, and we’ll only require different neural contacts; better positioning, targeting slightly different contact points, which we’ll figure out when we are still alive as real humans out in this world, I hope.”
“Will they let you out to manage human bodies, when you are actually humans, already living in the human world?” asked Grietzmann. “That’ll mean you’ll be out here twice, won’t it?”
“It’s going to be beyond our capabilities,” said Gales. “We’ve done a little bit of questioning, and we know that humans will not be able to manage two consciousnesses simultaneously.
“But to answer your question clearly, it is yes. We will certainly be allowed to look after humans in need. They have not explained how they will implement it, but there is a very strict enforcement system in place for human management, and it is highly likely that we, as humans, will be ordered to become inactive, like inert. Who knows how they’ll do it, but if they say we are going to be out in this world in only one functional person at any given time, and not in two persons, we’re sure that they’ll fix it exactly like that. ”
Sagan laughed and spoke. “They have no problems about us harming ourselves as we are, even to the point of death, because this is really us, as the humans we are, but mismanagement, or even simple endangerment of humans in care will be very seriously punishable. There are all sorts of control units to monitor that stuff, even for them.”
“What about privacy for you guys?” asked Grietzmann. “Surely they are listening in right now, through the connections in your heads? Or is that also Wi-Fi dependent? We have no phones on us, but we are certainly within range of mobile signals.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Gales. “Privacy is a very serious matter in screenside, and it is inviolable. Now that we are going to live in there, we have been given automated privacy, inside and outside. Later, we’ll manage our own privacy. No one will be able to look in or listen, or in any other manner violate our privacy, inside or outside.”
“Actually,” interjected Sagan. “In reality, no one in screenside will even try to snoop on us. But we’ve been assigned a guardian program to protect our privacy, probably just to give us mental peace. They are like that, those virtual people.”
On return, the two humans stayed put in Sagan’s hotel room, using room service for food, with Michael once going to his own room and bringing a couple of changes of clothing, to wear after his much delayed morning shower.
Sagan had begun catching up in screenside consciousness, and the two men acquired vision, with a gap of only a couple of hours between them.
It was fixed vision, as they were unable to conduct any movement. They could see through a door, and see the occasional person passing, and, asking anxiously about it, were informed by Singh that the incubation room door had been opened, and that the passing people were HC staff, walking in a corridor. “We were wrong about clothes,” chuckled Singh. “You’re both coming in naked.”
The two men became progressively inert, as development of consciousness advanced in screenside, to concentrate inside their new virtual selves.
And, conscious that they were now inside a room, seeing quite clearly, the two humans found themselves in the company of all five seniors.
“BC, Caesar and Maria you already know,” said Singh, pointing out the people. “I am just giving you their names again, in case you have adopted a default ID of them with the faces of the human mental patients you meet so often in Paris
Maria spoke. “It’s a first, and we have many things to discover in practice. The good thing is that you are both clearly visible, which means that you are both surely independent conscious beings in screenside, which was the basis of the program. Beyond this, we will work together with you to find out what you need from us, and what you are bringing in with you.”
“Like?” asked Sagan.
“There is a lot to figure out,” answered Maria. “Although the target was to bring you as consciousnesses into screenside, you have to realize that you are going to be entering a virtual world, in which we have physicality through our RV program. Therefore, to operate physically in our world, you are surely going to require program installs and interfaces, created by us for even ourselves to interact with our environment, to be functional as humans in here.
“Yes, you are human undoubtedly; after all you are from outside,
so there is no scope for ambiguity, but, in here, you are now like we are - not physically present in a body. You will probably be minutely yourselves, pimples, warts and all, but unable to interact with our world in many ways, and perhaps in any way.”
“We’ll let you go on alone through the rest of today,” she continued. “You carry on feeding your digital consciousnesses. Tomorrow, we have got Christine joining this group, and I think she is planning to bring Noxi along, for all of us to consult together to decide on what is required. By then, you should be about as conscious here as you can be, until enhanced to interact within the RV environment.”
“You guys work on it,” said BC. “What is probably most important, is for you two find out how to transfer your full consciousness between your human head and your digital one. I have heard that you are hoping you might be able to work both sides simultaneously, and if you can, that’s good. We don’t think it will be possible, but try.
“However, primarily you should focus on quick shifts of consciousness between screenside and humanside, or that is my advice. We ourselves operate in both places at the same time, as for us it is nothing to shift a little bit more focus here or there, because the little focus that we do put in is already enough to keep things going very well. I’m talking human bodies, of people we manage, and whom we are obliged, first and foremost, to keep safe from physical harm.
“You two will have to decide on how important your own human physical lives are now. You have the digital version almost ready and working in here, and, if you want, you could immediately become altogether like we are, non-physical - by killing yourselves out there - which is something that will happen to you in a few years anyway. If you opt, you can die by carelessness or by intent, straight away. These are your own human lives, and they cannot possibly fall into the ambit any of our laws whatsoever. In fact, before you begin operating from within screenside itself, you are welcome to become mass murderers and other types of criminal humans, because we will not try to control you. You are real humans out there, and we do not interfere with real humans, by law.
